Sunday, December 17, 2006

Love and Ambition

An old but unnamed friend gave the young and successful Giacomo Puccini some advice in a letter:

"After much sententious advice to work hard, not to rest on his laurels, and to avoid running into debt comes a more specific warning: Keep clear of women who, with rare exceptions, are the plague of society; treat them as playthings, to be thrown away into a corner once you have done with them: use them as a physical necessity, nothing more. As you know, I speak from experience. One last word of advice, take care not to fall in love if you can possibly avoid doing so, since that will lead you into the grave of matrimony, which ninety-nine times out of a hundred hampers, cuts short, and ruins a young man's career, especially one such as yours, who need absolute freedom and independence. But if by any chance you should fall into the net, for goodness sake, marry a woman whom you love, who is beautiful, simpatica, well-educated, and kind, because if you don't, heaven help you."

I don't treat women as playthings. My tendencie is to treat them as diety.

Though I can see how the unnamed friend's sage advice to Puccini can appear to objectifying women. That said, I think men of all ages tend to choose women whose pathos can immobilize them. Often, men don't see women as people with the same flaws as they have. I think it takes time to figure this out. It think this is the case for both genders.